


night shift / you're so nice and shit / three letters

by cracktheglasses (cormallen)



Series: Short Prompt Fic! [8]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: M/M, Short Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 14:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8375332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cormallen/pseuds/cracktheglasses
Summary: a few short prompt ficlets from tumblr:1. for the night shift anon2. "you're so fucking nice and shit"3. knifeplay





	1. night shift

Kylo stocks the coolers at three. It’s the deadest hour of overnight, long past the beer cut-off and the midnight rush, the quick, loud parade of kids from the campus, flip-flops squeaking on the freshly mopped floor. It won’t pick up again until after four, trucker caps, coveralls, coffee and scratch tickets, prepackaged donuts trailing clumps of powdered sugar in front of the till.

They don’t offer pump service until the morning proper; he puts up the prepay only signs and stacks orange cones in front of lanes three and four, leaving only the closest pump and the diesel open, speakers whispering Pink Floyd overhead. He’d turn it up but the dial’s been busted since before he was hired, and the back’s not wired for sound anyway, quiet moans of bass fading as he bundles into his hoodie and gloves and lifts the bar from the heavy steel door.

His breath shimmers in front of his face, congealing in the frigid air as he slings jugs of milk, blue tops, red tops, green tops, gallons first and then the halves, one shelf of single serve bottles in the middle. One of the cartons must be leaking; the bottom of the pallet is wet and smells vaguely of sick. Kylo considers finding the culprit, but there’s still the juice to do, orange, grape, cran-apple, and the soft, anemic sandwiches sealed into their crinkly triangular packets. Eggs. Butter. Miller. Natty Light. Natty Ice. The Pepsi shelves and the Coke shelves, and the slimy, white tubs of bait in the far corner. He doesn’t think they’ve sold one in living memory, but he rotates them anyway, back to front, pulls the oldest into a bag to toss into the dumpster later.

He’s done and back at the front by three thirty five, gloves stripped off and shoved into his pockets, which leaves him exactly ten minutes before The Suit comes through, and Kylo stares into the security mirror, quickly smoothing down his hair at the top.

It’s a futile task; the thick strands refuse to lay flat. He only succeeds in adding a touch of static frizz and has to lick his palm and run it over the crown again before the silver Mercedes pulls up outside, New York plates, tinted windows, no spoiler. The Suit is in slate grey tonight, red stubble lining his slender jaw; Kylo already has his pack of Lights 100s in hand and is authorizing thirty in gas before the man is barely out of the car. He’s not supposed to, but Kylo pumps it for him anyway while The Suit smokes, holding the cigarette crudely between thumb and index finger like it’s a joint, his eyes ice chips in his pale, narrow face.

According to his AmEx, The Suit has a name, but the short, rough consonants make Kylo think of a cough. A sneeze. An involuntary spasm at the back of the throat. The Suit fits him well enough, anyway; his tie tonight is black, narrow, knotted neatly under his starched, buttoned collar. It’s not the same black it was yesterday; the shade is warmer, somehow; the texture, smoother. Kylo thinks he must have a near-infinite number of them, each one ever so slightly off from the next, the black deeper, the sheen softer, millimeters of width swapped for millimeters of length.

The Suit tips him after he’s hung up the pump, another not supposed to, fingertips brushing Kylo’s as he offers up the bills, and Kylo shivers like he is back in the cooler again, trying to memorize the feel of them, the smooth index finger and slight roughness of the ring, the small scar on the pad of the thumb.

The first few times he saw The Suit, Kylo wondered where he was going, tie pin, pocket square, polished wingtips. Surely nobody was holding board meetings this time of night, this side of the river, and he doodled options idly on a napkin as he waited for sun-up, each more wildly implausible than the last. Mob boss. Vampire. Contract killer. The truth, whatever it is, is probably a lot more mundane, but Kylo supposes it says something about him and The Suit both that there was never a healthy, reasonable choice to be had in all of his scribbles.

“Five. I’m off at five,” Kylo blurts out suddenly, a cold, clammy rush settling over his spine before he’s done speaking.

“Noted,” The Suit says, letting his hand linger before it withdraws, mouth crooking into a small, feral smile.


	2. you're so nice and shit

“You’re so nice and shit,” Kylo slurs, hand lifting up to paw ineffectually at the side of Hux’s face. He misses by a mile, lets his wrist hang in the air, fingers splayed out, chipping black polish on the nails. His eyeliner is beginning to smear around his left eye, melting down hot, reddened skin. The right is still holding, pointed at the corner, perfectly winged, though glitter is trailing down Kylo’s cheekbone, sparkling silver in the squares of light bleeding through the window. 

Kylo lowers his hand, finally, pulls his sleeve down over his fingers, thumb pushing through the hole in the fabric. 

“Why are you so fuckin’ nice to me?”

“Somebody has to be,” Hux sighs, unscrewing the top of the tub of Bayer. “Here. Take three. This, too; drink all of it. You’ll thank me in the morning.”

Kylo drinks noisily from the bottle, tipping back to slurp down the final drops. He lets the empty plastic drop to the floor instead of handing it back to Hux, and it promptly rolls down, vanishing somewhere underneath the bed. Hux sighs again; he’ll probably need the broom to fish it out.

“Too fuckin’ nice,” Kylo says, one eye narrowed. His long nose twitches. Hux thinks it makes him look like a bird, one of the irate, irreverent crows milling around the East lawn, by the Fitzwallace Building, though crows are probably cleaner. Kylo’s shirt is stained an indeterminable red; he smells like warm beer and salty, fresh sweat, and when he lifts his hand again, Hux leans into the touch, allows Kylo’s fingers to land on his chin, thumb swiping wetly at his lower lip.

“On your mouth. You have something, something – I don’t know. Gone, now,” Kylo pronounces, removing his hand, but the impression of each finger lingers, a soft prickle on Hux’s skin. 

“You don’t have to, you know. Be so damn nice all the time,” Kylo clarifies, and starts pulling his shirt over his head. Whatever the red is, it’s stained through to his chest, a dark splotch in the middle, like blood. “I’d blow you anyway, you know that, right? Not now, though. Tomorrow. My fuckin’ head hurts,” he says, finally wresting the shirt off. 

“You’re really drunk,” Hux says uselessly, and Kylo grins and starts on the buckle of his belt. 

“No shit. Tell me more, wise owl. “

“Good night, Kylo,” says Hux, moving towards the door.

“Yeah,” Kylo calls out after him, the sound of his zipper suddenly too loud. “Said it yourself, I’d thank you in the morning.”


	3. three letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with lovely art by @the-garbage-chute [here](http://the-garbage-chute.tumblr.com/post/146919321220/i-am-wanted-inspired-by-cracktheglasses)

There are scars on Kylo’s back, thin white whorls outlining vertebrae, faded red script he can’t read except in the most simple of terms: 

I am. I belong. 

Letters, three in a row, curving with the bend of a shoulder, and again, at the nape of the neck. He hunches down, small, one nervous hand pushing into his hair, the other reaching back for the calming, warm feel of them, the skin raised, rough, familiar: two verticals, one horizontal. An almost-circle. Crossing diagonals, thicker than the rest, like they’ve been traced over again and again, opened up scarlet each time they knitted closed.

He digs a nail into the still-tender, paper-thin center of the X and winces; it doesn’t compare, this blunt, inelegant imitation, but it helps, and Kylo closes his eyes, and thinks of other hands, sharp, demanding, sure. Rusty red fingerprints on his side, on his sheets. The taste of salt and iron in his mouth. 

He breathes in. Out. In again. Drags his palm over the nape of his neck, tracing out the letters. He doesn’t need to read them to know what they mean:

I am. I belong. I am wanted.


End file.
